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5 Things You Didn’t Know About Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep has played many roles in her 40-year-long film career, most recently a tone-deaf opera singer with dreams to perform at Carnegie Hall, which earned her a Best Actress in a Leading Role Academy Award nomination. “I’m curious about other people,” Streep has said. “That’s the essence of my acting. I’m interested in what it would be like to be you.” Streep has always been interested in transformation; as she once told Vogue, when she was little, she would draw age lines on her face, pretending to be her own grandmother. Since making her film debut at age 28 in Julia, Streep has racked up three Oscar wins and 20 nominations in acting awards—more nominations than any other actor in the history of the Academy Awards. Here, in honor of her most recent recognition, five other things you may not have known about the inimitable Meryl Streep.

1. Jane Fonda was Streep’s mentor. In a 2014 interview with Good Morning America, Fonda recalled her own experiences as an up-and-coming actress: “I was close to Bette Davis. I was close to Barbara Stanwyck [and] Katharine Hepburn. And why didn’t I ask them endless questions? ‘What do you do when you are nervous? How do you overcome fear?’ And I didn’t!” Fonda said. “You know the only person who has ever asked me those kinds of questions? And of course it would be her: Meryl Streep.” Streep previously acknowledged this career coaching (which began on the set of the 1977 drama, Julia) while paying tribute to Fonda at the 2014 AFI Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony: “I was so nervous because all of my scenes were going to be with you,” Streep confessed. “[Fonda] had this almost feral alertness, like this bright blue attentiveness to everything that was around her that was completely intimidating—and made me feel like I was lumpy and from New Jersey, which . . . I am.”

2. The cerulean monologue in The Devil Wears Prada was Streep’s idea. After Andy (Anne Hathaway) scoffs at Miranda Priestly’s (Streep) difficulty choosing between two seemingly similar turquoise belts, Priestly delivers a designer-filled diatribe that explains how the fashion industry is responsible for Andy’s nubby cable-knit sweater. Streep later said it was about “getting the business of fashion scene in the movie.” Convincing, yes, but screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna revealed the specifics were not fact-based: “All of the stuff is made up,” McKenna said. “It was funny because somebody wrote an article saying, ‘They didn’t show this color on this day.’ It really made me giggly because I couldn’t use real examples because, first of all, we had to pick a color that would work on-screen and blue was going to be the best color to use, so we kind of worked from there. I mean, I’m sure there were cerulean collections, but the way we talk about it in the movie, all those references are made up.” The one truth: A blue sweater is not just a blue sweater.

3. Streep almost went to law school except, well, she overslept. After graduating from Vassar College in 1971, Streep applied to law school, but accidentally slept through her alarm the morning of her interview. Streep took this as a sign that she was meant to pursue a different dream and ultimately followed her calling to Yale School of Drama. “The rest,” Streep said, “is history.”

4. Streep’s path to stardom wasn’t without bumps. Streep traveled to the U.K. as an actress in her 20s, and didn’t yet have a place to sleep: “On my very, very first trip to London, when I was 20, I went around busking to afford food and overnight accommodation,” Streep later told Closer magazine. “One night when I hadn’t earned enough, I actually slept in the open in Green Park, under a tree. The view was of the Ritz London hotel and I vowed to myself that night that I was going to stay there one day—and I have!” Streep stays grounded though: “You can’t possibly get spoiled if you do your own ironing and get the station wagon out to go into town to get the weekly groceries.”

5. Streep didn’t think she was actress material. “I was probably like every other girl who puts on a princess dress and expects everyone to pay full and total attention. And most of us grow out of that,” Streep has said. “I was always in plays, but I thought it was vain to be an actress. Plus, I thought I was too ugly to be an actress. Glasses weren’t fabulous then.” It’s no wonder then that while Streep donated her Devil Wears Prada wardrobe to charity, she opted to keep the glasses.